I get frustrated by alledged cause and effect - increasing temperatures (1 degree in last century) - resulting in large storm damage. We've had many damaging storms in the US during the past 200 years, but we also have experienced increasing population and enlarging infrastructure - resulting in increased loss of life and property loss. So what are we to do? Let's not argue over cause and effect. If we reduced the US carbon footprint by 50%, our efforts would be totally negated by the increased carbon footprint of the developing world. And they will not be denied their opportunity for a better life.

So let's work together to lessen the impact on our ever shrinking world through engineering solutions to lessen the impact. Who should pay for these solutions?: The people who chose to live and work in those areas impacted. Anything else requires some arbittrary decision by some elected beauracrats to take money from some people in a manner that would be called theft in any other circumstance.

A "carbon tax" is a poor solution because it requires buy-in to a scientific theory that cannot be proven until it's too late - and would require world-wide adoption to be effective. And such adoption will not happen.

I was referring to the recent hyperbole about the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy on the east coast of North America. All Americans, not just rich Americans, as well as the rest of the western world, will not accept a forced reduction of fossil fuels. This is a political reality. Do you think one group of people should be forced to pay for another group on the other side of the world?

"Do you think one group of people should be forced to pay for another group on the other side of the world?"

No, that is exactly why we need a price on eCO2 emissions! The principle should be that the polluter pays.

That said, I would not directly link it to the cost of any specific disaster. It is impossible to prove how much of the damage should be attributed to AGW. The price should be determined on best estimates of expected consequences (positive as well as negative) and gradually rise. Fairness suggests that every person on earth has equal emission rights, so poor nations would have room to develop.

And I don't think political feasibility is necessarily a fatal problem. Already the EU, China, Australia and many other nations are implementing a price on emissions. We can do this.

Please help me understand how your carbon tax works. Some beauracrats (the same geniuses who are handling Europe's financial mess and who crafted ObamaCare and are running the Chinese economy - all the while enriching themselves) collect a tax on emmitters of carbon. The consumers of this carbon (people who purchase gasoline for their cars, electricity for heating their home, etc.) experience a lower standard of living due to these higher costs. (You do realize that the higher costs imposed by the geniuses are paid for by those least able to bear that cost!??) Then the taxes collected by the geniuses are used to build walls around Pacific atolls to prevent flooding. Is that the plan?

Probably too complex to tie it all together. Still, rich nations should feel an obligation to help people on flooding islands, for example if they need to resettle elsewhere.

I'd settle for a plan that makes greenhouse gas emissions more expensive, but then uses the proceeds to compensate people on a per capita basis. Most feasible to do that within countries. This would mean people would pay more for anything that is associated with greenhouse gas emissions, but they would have more money. People who don't use much fossil fuel energy would be better off, people who use a lot would pay more or change their behavior. On the production side, a mounting levy like that would gradually and predictably shift demand away from fossil fuel use towards alternatives (or towards higher efficiency and less energy use).

This will drive the technological and infrastructural revolution that we need: improved efficiency of solar and wind power, possibly nuclear (though I doubt it; too expensive), smart electricity distribution systems, electric cars, public transport, bikeways, less urban sprawl. And probably much more. The market mechanism is great at innovating. We need to give that system the right incentives, though, and for that we need a price on carbon.

I've enjoyed our debate, but your start was revealing - If it's [your solution is] "too complex to tie it all together", my bet is your belief is based upon the world as you would like it to be, rather than the world as it is. I have an issue with almost every point you make, but I also have a life to live - so I'm going back to work.

Firstly, I wrote that I did not see a need to formulate one solution that solves all problems, but that a simple price on eCO2 emissions would be a good start.

Second, “For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.” (H.L. Mencken). If you want to consider only simple solutions to the world's problems, you won't get far.

Likewise, if you only want to consider the world as it is, and have no thoughts about what it could be like, everything will just 'happen' to you. And if you live in the US and have never lived anywhere else, as it is my bet that you do, you have little right to claim you know what the world is like.

You certainly live in a world of "absolutes". As you wrote: "Rich nations "should" feel an obligation..." and "...you (I) have little right to claim...".
I, on the other hand, believe that government leaders have an unfounded belief in their own solutions. I admire their quest for solutions, but I'm dismayed at their gross ignorance of (or willful refusal to consider) human behavior and economic principles. Capitalism has provided a tremendous improvement in human lives during the last 200 years, through an efficient allocation of invested capital - provide better and cheaper goods and services. But governments do not understand that business (composed of people) responds better to incentives rather than penalties. And the energy that could be focused on the desired outcomes are dissipated by focusing on avoiding the penalties. But governments keep on imposing taxes on business to change behavior. And business keep increasing their prices to pay those taxes - reducing the disposable income of those least able to pay. It's a sad dance to watch.
I DO have the right to claim I know human behavior (and the behavior of business), because I've watched and talked to people for over 60 years. I've seen what works and what does't work. And people respond the same, whether in the US or India.
There are so many problems that need to be addressed in this world, I just wish governments would look at market-based solutions, rather than increased taxes, coupled with convoluted schematics that usually result in unintended negative consequences (i.e ObamaCare).

With all respect, that is simplistic right-wing extremist nonsense, if you ask me.

Your views offer no solution at all for things like climate change or the lack of chances in life for children of poor parents, to name but two issues.

I tell you how we can use the market mechanism to get good outcomes on the first of these problems and all you come back with is long-discarded ideological blabber about taxes and governments being bad and that taxing business penalises poor people. That is both not consistent with economic theory (as you do not in any way address externalities) and also inconsistent with empirical evidence.

To be blunt, your economic theories are just self-serving lies. You are a rich American, you think you deserve all you have (and more), and are too selfish to spare a thought for people who were less fortunate in life than you. At least, that's the impression I get from your writing.

Perhaps you don't know me. These verbal assaults via the internet are not effective at bridging differences of opinion based upon different life experiences - and solving actual problems. I'm sure the wisdom of crowds will someday be extremely helpful in solving the world's problems, but our recent election does not give me hope. We're more polarized than ever!

True enough. It doesn't appear that improved means of communication have led to more mutual (or multi-way) understanding. Instead people use the freedom of the internet and diversity of other media to select the information that fits their values and attitudes. On top of that, vested interests use ever more sophisticated marketing techniques to influence decisions.

But I maintain that it is especially the US right that does that, with its climate denialism, birthers, war on any and all tax and government, and against basically everything that is different from them and their values. There is a group that simply does not acknowledge unwelcome facts, and for me personally, there is little that gets me fired up more.

You get fired up about the beliefs "the right", but don't allow them to get fired up about your beliefs? That doesn't see fair.
Your facts are no more considered facts by the right than their facts are to you.
And the reason the US seems so offensive to you is that many of us have not succumbed to the fairy-tail beliefs of the Europeans - because we know there will be no "Germany" to bail us out.

The difference is in the evidence for those beliefs, TMacP. You know, what scientists have established as fact. People who don't 'consider' AGW to be real simply place themselves outside any rational discussion.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for a balanced budget. But in the case of the US, closing loopholes for the rich would be first in my book.

And I re-iterate that extreme libertarian economic 'theory' has no answer to externalities. Which probably explains why believers of that ideology prefer to pretend that externalities do not exist.

Unfortunately the sentence in the opening paragraph "The emission of greenhouse gases generates a negative spillover — global warming — that harms others." is completely false. There has never been any scientific proof or demonstration of that claim.

Warmists claim that "back-radiation" from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause the Earth surface temperature to be 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would be without those gases. If so then there would not be snow on mountain tops unless there was also ice on the sea at that latitude. Simply walking from sea-level up the side of a mountain while remaining at the same latitude would mean that the temperature would not change. The ground around the observer would be receiving the same amount of energy from the Sun and would be under the same atmosphere containing the same amount of greenhouse gas regardless of being at sea-level or on top of a mountain so the temperature would not change. Who believes that?

In fact, there is no such thing as back-radiation causing warming, it simply slows the rate of cooling of a warm object. A good example of this is the old-fashioned thermos flask. The vacuum between the inner and outer cylinders minimises loss of heat through conduction. The inner, mirrored surface of the outer wall minimises loss of heat through radiation. It reflects the radiant heat emitted by the hot water back into the water. If back-radiation caused heating then the contents would boil and blow the top off the flask. No such boiling takes place. Simple proof that back-radiation does not cause warming!

As for the quality of science in USA, it is abysmal when it comes to climate science. The last three IPCC Assessment Reports have featured the figure from the 1997 paper by Kiehl and Trenberth showing the Earth's annual global mean energy budget in units of Watts per square metre. There is a sole source of energy being 342 W/sq.m from the Sun. Of this 168 W/sq.m reaches the ground and warms the Earth's surface. Then it shows 492 W/sq.m leaving that surface without any indication as to the source of the additional energy. Of this 390 W/sq.m is said to be long wavelength radiation generated by the Sun-warmed surface.

Clearly we all have our solar panels and hot water systems upside-down. They should be facing the ground and receiving its radiation, amounting to 2.3 times that coming in from the Sun. This would have the added benefit of not collecting dust on the panels, which happens when they face up toward the Sun. Any takers for turning their panels upside down and benefiting from all of this extra, free renewable energy that comes out of nowhere? No? Yet you believe the fiction of greenhouse gas global warming?

What part did you not understand? The graph clearly shows how the greenhouse effect works, and as far as I can see things balance out quite well. It's not hard to imagine what happens if there are more greenhouse gases around: the back-radiation would strengthen.

As I've said before, you're up against a century of climate research here and I have never seen a scientist arguing what you are arguing. Feel free to keep on doing your do-it-yourself analyses, but I think it would be fair to the few readers that are left on this discussion thread to point out that you have no support in science at all.

And of course such revolutionary ideas should be published in the literature! How's that ground-breaking paper in Science or Nature going?

Yes Sense Seeker it must be nice sitting there in your ivory tower pontificating to the masses at their expense. Obviously your word has much greater authority than that of an aged retiree, without any professional affiliations, living on a government pension, such as myself, - a bit like you in a way.

I have read the 2009 paper on the Earth Global Energy Budget and see that it contains the same gross error as the 1997 paper, namely that it contradicts the law of conservation of energy. In both papers the energy emanating from the Earth's surface and down from the atmosphere - so-called back radiation, are of greater magnitude than the supply of incoming energy, which is impossible without an added source of internal energy. Try putting the back radiation to zero. That reduces the surface radiation by the same amount and, lo and behold, you still end up with a balanced budget for the Earth and atmosphere as a whole. In other words, the figure for back radiation is meaningless with respect to the Earth's radiation budget, it could be set at any figure you choose and it makes no difference to the final outcome.

However if you know of a way of producing energy out of nowhere, please let me know so that I can go into production and sell the resulting energy to our electricity grid.

The fact is that it was pointed out decades ago that the proposition is another Perpetua mobilia which violates the laws of thermodynamics. However that has not deterred the IPCC and associated climate scientists from promoting the scam.

For your information, radiation returned to a source is of lesser intensity and lower frequency than that emitted from a source. As such, any absorbed back radiation merely replaces some of the emitted radiation by filling some vacated low energy, low frequency energy states and thereby slowing the rate of cooling of the source. It does not and cannot cause the source to get any hotter, that is emitting even higher frequency radiation, which is what anthropogenic greenhouse gas global warming proposes.

In conclusion, the thermos flask analogy, in spite of your attempted ridicule, is an excellent practical example that negates the climate scientists’ claims.

As for publication, you know very well that scientists wishing to publish contradictions to the IPCC theology have been locked out of science journals to such a degree that they have been
obliged to form their own means of informing the public of this attempt by UN bureaucrats to achieve political and economic dominance over the world at large. You don’t happen to preach at the University of East Anglia by any chance, perhaps at their Climate Research Unit?

If I were just sitting an "my ivory tower", would I be corresponding with you? The 'ivory tower' is an outdated view of what is done in universities, back from the time when there were still continuous appointments. Now we live on contracts of a few years at maximum. If there's no money, off you go. The image of academics leading a leisurely life is false in academia as I know it. But I digress.

And no, I am not in East Anglia, not even in climate science. Which is why I would hesitate to go against well-established views, as you courageously do. But I honestly don't think the conspiracy to keep skeptics out of the literature exists. Most scientists honestly assess any paper they review, and on the whole, the scientists have nothing to gain from a conspiracy. To get funds it might work for a while, but in the end the truth would come out (unless they'd find a way to secretly influence the climate) and they'd be out of a job. An academic scientist found to have committed fraud is never hired again, anywhere. So there is a strong incentive to be honest.

As to the figure in the Trenberth figure, you are simply wrong. I checked the top end of the figure, where energy enters from space (341.3 W/m2) and leaves to space (101.9 + 238.5 = 340.4), which leaves a gap of 0.9 W/m2, so that energy remained in the earth system. At the bottom part of the graph, 161 + 333 = 494 W/m2 is absorbed and 396 + 80 + 17 = 493 w/m2 is emitted. This leaves 1 (or 0.9, to be more precise) W/m2 that represents net warming of the earth system. So no energy is created or obliterated. So I can't quite see what you don't understand, but I must admit that I don't understand your explanation above.

Neither do I understand your thermos flask analogy. A thermos that did not have the reflective, insulated layer on the inside would lose its heat much faster. Better insulation, higher temperature. But the thermos is not heated from the outside, as earth is. If energy could enter the thermos unhindered, but on its way out would meet the insulation layer, it would heat up if the insulation was turned up, until the leakage to the outside would have increased to reach equilibrium again. It would reach that if we assume that the insulation layer can reflect back a fixed proportion of the outgoing energy.

So there's no need for violations of the laws of thermodynamics to accept the greenhouse effect could exist. And really, I can't imagine that in the 150 years that it has been known to exist, this has not all been thought through a hundred times before. Anyone who thinks he can disprove the greenhouse effect on first principles must be rather full of himself.

I see that you stubbornly refuse to try and understand my propositions. They may not be well expressed but please try.

The Kiehl and Trenberth paper clearly identifies serious problems with the peer review and publishing practices in climate science. What editor or reviewer would accept a paper that violates the law of conservation of energy? Further, the paper calculates their modelled radiation from clouds using Planck's law and an emissivity of one. Planck's law was derived for a perfectly regular black surface in thermal equilibrium, radiating at a chosen temperature to give the well known Planck spectrum. Clouds do not in any way fit this precondition in that they do not have a surface but are a diffused volume of atmospheric gases and water vapour. Any supposed surface, such as an artist may draw, certainly does not form a continuous surface at the dimensions appropriate to the wavelength of infrared radiation, that is, of the order of 10 to 100 microns. Nor is the swirling mass of a cloud in any way close to thermal equilibrium and an emissivity of one implies a perfectly black surface. How often do you see a completely black cloud? Here most clouds are white or a pale shade of grey. If a cloud is black it is likely that it is so thick and dense that no sunlight passes through it and not that the viewed surface is a perfect absorber and emitter of electromagnetic radiation.

In your reference to the Trenberth figure you mistakenly identify the errors in the estimates as being a source of warming. I do not think that the paper makes such a claim. The trickery in the diagram is to put a figure on the back radiation and then add that figure to the surface emission and pretend that it has proved something about back radiation. As I stated, a figure of zero still gives a balanced budget via this trickery, that is, zero back radiation.

As for the lack of back radiation heating in a thermos flask, might I remind you that the earth is not heated continuously. Here, the daily temperature rises for about 9 hours and falls for the other 15 hours.

Further the idea that the global warming thesis has been known to exist was simply a false claim made by warmists. The papers by Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius did not prove global warming. Fourier's paper correctly identified the lack of convection currents for the warming of a green house, he said nothing about global warming. Tyndall's experiments measured the opacity of various gases but did not give any indication as to where any absorbed heat went or why. Arrhenius' paper misrepresented Fourier by claiming that he suggested greenhouse warming might apply to the end of ice ages. He then did a what-if calculation with erroneous data to estimate what effect there might be if his assumption was valid. This did not 'prove' anything.

As another example of the dishonesty in climate science, the First IPCC Assessment Report claimed that the examples of the temperature of Venus and Mars proved that the Earth's surface temperature is due to greenhouse gases. Venus was shown as having a main greenhouse gas of more than 90% CO2 causing a warming of 523 degrees Celsius. Mars with a greenhouse gas of more than 80% had 10 degree C warming. Hence Earth' temperature anomaly of 33 degrees C must be due to its greenhouse gases of about 0.04% CO2 and 1% water. Since then exploratory vehicles have been landed on Mars and measurements taken by these vehicles now conclude that Mars has 95.6% CO2 and zero greenhouse gas warming. The poor followers of the greenhouse gas thesis have been left to hang out to dry but there has been no word of these findings from the promoters of the scam.

It seems, Sense Seeker, that no matter what evidence I provide, you still wish to cling to membership of the Greenhouse Gas Global Warming congregation. Luckily we live in places of religious tolerance, although deniers and skeptics certainly get an inordinately large share of enmity.

However, I am not alone. There are many scientist around the world who are dismayed at the mode of operation of the Warmists, even Nobel Laureates.

As for pre-retirement, I worked as a geophysicist. My experience there plainly showed that one cannot foresee what Nature may throw up. Even the most advanced of computer models are useless when the exploration target turns out to be completely different to the model assumptions and you only learn that after the source has been identified.

Furthermore I saw the massive amounts of carbonate rocks making up the Earth's crust and the impressive carbonate alteration underground which is to be expected given that carbon is the fourth most abundant of 92 elements in the Universe. What is remarkable is that there is only a minute 0.04% of CO2 in the atmosphere and to propose that this is a danger to life sounds ridiculous. Throughout the 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence, the composition of both the atmosphere and the oceans has changed continuously, as has the climate, the life forms, even the location and size of the continents.

As I wrote at the beginning, the sentence that "The emission of greenhouse gases generates a negative spillover — global warming — that harms others." is completely false. There has not been any scientific proof or demonstration of that claim.

As I thought, a retired mining geologist. Including coal mining, I suppose?

For some reason many retired geologists in Australia have a hard time thinking rationally about global warming. Hard to accept that your life's work turns out to have such nasty side effects, I guess. However, sad as that might be, most of the time you were quite unaware of that fact and the energy from coal has been very useful to an awful lot of people. No reason to feel bad, I think.

It's just that we have to accept new evidence and move away from fossil fuels now. We can't afford to remain stuck in denial when confronted with unpleasant facts. We have to act, mainly for the sake of future generations.

If catastrophic global warming is just around the corner, where are the calls for climate remediation? Where is the panic? Where are the demands for martial law? This is no time for pussyfooting about civil rights!

If the anthropogenic global warming scare is meant to be taken seriously, how does one explain the witch hunt against nuclear power? Why are ridiculous green schemes, such as wind, solar and geothermal energy portrayed as practical solutions to CO2 emissions? AGW is obviously intended to divert attention from real environmental issues.

First, we need to face reality. Democracy is a failure. It is incapable of rational thinking, much less taking the draconian measures necessary to solve a problem of Chicxulub proportions. The purpose of government is to govern, not to win elections.

First, we need to face reality. Democracy is a failure. It is incapable of rational thinking, much less taking the draconian measures necessary to solve a problem of Chicxulub proportions. The purpose of government is to govern, not to win elections.

Your claim may be moderated by recalling Churchill's famous dictum: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." (from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947)

The overall evidence of a trend of Global Warming is rather compelling. Within a complex system like the global climate that has short- medium and long-term cycles, even over decades, it will be always possible to cherry-pick data sets that contradict a long-term trend, and that is what the likes of Monckton and his peers do. However, correlations between rising CO2 levels and global surface temperatures suggest that our planet is on a one-way warming trend triggered by human activity.

Nonetheless: Suppose there was only a minor chance that Global Warming would further develop as predicted: the impact on human civilization and its consequences would probably be far greater than anything else before in human history, so wouldn’t it make sense to prepare even for a low-likelihood but high-impact event?

Energy use and emissions are issues that the world’s governments need to solve anyway for sustainability, geopolitical, environmental and competitiveness reasons.

Taking all into account, governments can only hope to keep or raise life standards by taking immediate and massive action on these issues.

A slight problem.
Global warming is not happening.
It was always was a huge delusional con.
The earth has been cooling since 1998 and this cooling is speeding up.
The Economist is in bed with the same crowd of people as the BBC, and Jimmy Savile.
No excuse for being partisan, today it passes for good journalism doesn't it?

America hasn't had a hurricane landfall in 7 years.
Sandy wasn't a hurricane when it made landfall it was a tropical storm.
Big, dangerous but by no means unique.

The crass media, of which the Economist is not ashamed to be yet another idiotic member, openly flouts facts.

Read about it:-
NOAA Confirms Hurricane Sandy Was Not A Result Of Ocean Global Warming, nor CO2, C3Headlines.com

The more advanced a culture is, the less damage it does to the environment on a per capita basis. The paleo Indians contributed to the extinction of the mamoths, mastadons, giant ground sloths and native horses, camels and giant buffalo.

The article mentions "human suffering." The immense human suffering resulting from a tax on "carbon" (by which scientific illiterates mean a tiny trace gas: CO2) will be far greater than any supposed global warming.

Further, there is no empirical evidence that CO2 causes global warming. None. The ridiculous idea that a change from 3 molecules out of 10,000 to 4 molecules out of 10,000 in the atmosphere will cause runaway global warming has no basis in the real world. Even as CO2 rises, the global temperature has been stagnant for the past 16 years. The planet itself is falsifying the CO2 myth.

And further: nothing happening now is unprecedented. Everything observed now has happened repeatedly, and to a greater degree, in the past. That includes hurricanes and storm surges. Thus, the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified.

AGW is simply a conjecture. An opinion. It is not a testable hypothesis, nor is it a theory. It is a failed conjecture with no supporting empirical evidence in the real world. As the article states: "...tax..." That is the motivation behind the "carbon" scare. An amazing number of people seem anxious to hand their financial heads on a platter to corrupt governments, based on an evidence-free conjecture. Appalling.

I reiterate my offer to apply for membership in AIPAC if the television networks broadcast a slow motion video of the jet crash into either Twin Tower, which does not look like a cgi cartoon. Wheter AIPAC accepts my application is another matter.

Sense Seeker,
As usual for a climate alarmist, you make an impotent appeal to authority, instead of arguing scientific facts. You do not address the plain fact that global warming has stopped for the past 16 years, even while [harmless, beneficial] CO2 has steadily risen.
And my CV has been posted repeatedly on the internet's "Best Science and Technology" website, WattsUpWithThat.com. I invite you to do a search for it. You will surely learn some climate science during your search.
The fact is that there is ZERO empirical evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. None at all. But there is ample scientific evidence showing that ∆T causes ∆CO2. Thus, you have cause and effect reversed, which results in your erroneous conclusion.

You reject the authority of academies of science, but choose to put your trust in what you read on the website of an ex-weather presenter without any scientific credentials? Well, you're free to choose who to believe, but frankly I think you're quite mad, to be honest.

And obviously, your lack of knowledge of climate science doesn't lead you to avoid absolute statements like "The fact is that there is ZERO empirical evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. None at all." How would you know? For all I know you are a very clever guy, but you are a nitwit on climate science. You are simply a True Believer.

Lastly, yes, ∆T causes ∆CO2. It's called a positive feedback loop, with warming causing CO2 releases by natural causes, which gives more warming, which releases more CO2 (partly in the form of methane, which breaks down to CO2).

That's why it's so urgent that we stop emitting CO2: the climate system is inherently unstable. If we add enough CO2, we might end up with runaway warming. And paleoclimate research shows that there were a few periods with very high CO2 and temperatures. Such periods caused mass extinctions, so we might want to avoid a repeat.

@Sense Seeker
Mogumbo Gono is an even more serious case than you think. Read his statement carefully:
"The fact is that there is ZERO empirical evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. None at all."
He DENIES THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT ITSELF... it's as spectacular as firm believer in Creationism!!

In the 1950s, from 1954 to 1960s, ten major hurricanes ran the Eastern Seaboard, six hit the Carolinas northward in two years, in '54, '55, including Connie and Diane, which caused unbelievable flooding in 1955. Hurricane Carol, 1954, 15 feet of water up Naraganset Bay. The 1938 hurricane, which had 186 mile an hour winds gusts at Blue Hill, Massachusetts, blew down two billion trees, caused a 50-foot surge of water across Long Island. If that storm had been 60 miles further west with the landfall at the battery, there would have been 20 feet of water into New York City.

Scientists having been saying for years that we were returning to the cycle of the 1950s, that the Pacific, which by the way is at record-breaking cold levels, is cooling, the Atlantic is warming, the Atlantic warm cycle lasts another 10 to 15 years.

Dr. Bill Grey of Colorado State made this prediction in the late '70s, that we were going into this very cycle, people laughed at him, here it comes. The Atlantic is warm, the Pacific is cold, the action shifts to the East Coast of the United States like it did in the 1950s for 10 to 15 years, and then we cool the Atlantic and we go back the other way.

I remember all those storms except the one of 1938. "Sandy" was not a hurricane when it touched land but, rather, a large tropical storm. It seems that the damage was due to its regrettable confluence with a second storm that arrived from the American Midwest on the East Coast.

Is Sandy, then, really relevant to the "global warming" debate? We have had many such intense low pressure systems in the past -- tropical storms -- and they seem unexceptional. "Diana" (1984) and "Bob" (1985) were similarly mild hurricanes (barely 74 mph) and these are long forgotten. The disaster spawned by "Sandy" was due neither to a particularly strong storm nor an tof them especially noteable -- combined with a high tide to create the current mess. This would seem to have little to do with climate change -- Mayor Bloomberg notwithstanding.

So far today we've learned that global warming causes nor'easters to happen with hurricanes, global warming causes left hooks, global warming causes ocean currents that melt the arctic ice cap, that most of the heat from global warming concentrated itself in the waters off the coast of the eastern seaboard last week (which means the global temp must have dropped near average) making Sandy 10% strong than it would have been, and that CO2 was stable in the periods we don't have data for.

Besides, there's not money for bloggers on that side of the debate. If I were in it for the money, I'd have fed you more lies than you already swallowed. There is proof that ExxonMobil and Koch spent tens of millions on blogs and think tanks that misrepresent the science, and none that NOAA and NASA are corrupt.

It is indeed a fact that the globe has warmed since the Dalton minimum of 1820 or so. Aside from that, the attribution of the causes of this warming are still under discussion by scientists. You argue for public brainwashing. I dissent.

Get a grip. If over 97% of climate scientists and all major academies of science are convinced our CO2 emissions are a major cause of warming, accepting that view is not a sign of a washed brain. NOT accepting it is stupid arrogance.

AGW is only a conjecture. It is not a hypothesis, and neither is it a theory. An hypothesis, or a theory, requires testability and falsifiability. AGW has neither. AGW is simply a conjecture; an opinion. And after sixteen years of no global warming, AGW is being deconstructed by Planet Earth.

I never trust the press or second hand accounts of what scientists supposedly believe about highly politicized subjects, but I am aware that opposition to nuclear power is pure insanity. It began as a communist inspired attempt to increase public hysteria about radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons, and it succeeded beyond belief. Now the coal and oil industries are trying to crush the competition. The only reason for promoting green schemes, such as wind power is to divert attention from nuclear power.

We need a crash program to rely 100% on nuclear generated electricity, which would make it economical to recharge the batteries on electric cars. Of course, this will require getting rid of so-called democracy, or we can wait for full fledged totalitarianism.

What we need is a NEW nuclear power solution.
Thorium powered reactors would be the direction to go. Thorium is 4 times more common than Uranium, and Thorium salt reactors CAN'T melt down because once human interaction with the reaction stops, the reaction stops itself. It's also harder to create nuclear weapons material with Thorium Reactor by-products.

What we need is a NEW nuclear power solution.
Thorium powered reactors would be the direction to go. Thorium is 4 times more common than Uranium, and Thorium salt reactors CAN'T melt down because once human interaction with the reaction stops, the reaction stops itself. It's also harder to create nuclear weapons material with Thorium Reactor by-products.

"...the fact that such an epic storm might not even knock the GDP statistics off track..." Looking at the economic effects of Sandy in isolation is myopic.In the last 15 years or so the USA has year after year received a battering from natural phenomena of all kinds. The cumulative cost of recovery must be a drain on the country's resources which could have been put to better alternative use for the benefit of its people. Simply rebuilding what Nature has destroyed is staying in the same spot and does not provide the population with a vision and hope beyond mere subsistence and survival.

Once you realize that carbon dioxide does not cause Global Warming or is it "climate change now"?(It's so hard to keep track of the enviro-nazi's "disaster d'jour")then this whole dissertation and it's author appears pretty stupid.

Perhaps you can enlighten us regarding your qualifications to be so certain that CO2 does not cause climate change? Your vast knowedge of physical chemistry, perhaps? Climatology? Do you have any real qualifications to make this statement, or is this just your opinion?

In my crystal ball I clearly see that in less than a generation you will have forgotten you were ever arguing against the obvious truth of anthropogenic climate change, and be just as embarrassed as pro-German collaborators after WW2 should you be confronted with what you just wrote.

Of course history will tell which of us is right (if any). But nobody will be listening.

In laboratory environment, the amount of extra heat absorbed from sunlight from 1 extra gram of carbon dioxide gas is accurately measured, and the change in this amount as a function of its concentration (extra gram at 90% CO2 concentration versus the same at 0.01%) is also fully measured and known.
We also have a good idea of how much CO2 humans release into the atmosphere (We know how much fossil fuels we burn, so we can calculate the amount of CO2 released using high-school chemistry). So, the amount of extra heat absorbed from sunglight caused by Human-caused CO2 can be indisputably calculated. In other words, this far is hard, scientific fact that can be verified by anyone who hasn't flunked high school Chemistry or Physics. (Yes, I know THAT's a tall order for an American...)

Now, from here on, there are several factors that are currently unmeasured, unknown, or disputed:
1. How much CO2 is absorbed naturally by nature every year?
2. How are extra heat distributed around the world, and what is its effect on global temperature?
3. What are the positive/negative feedback loops that exist between temperature and natural CO2 release/absorption?

So, we don't know the natural heat budget of Planet Earth well enough to assess the impact of the extra heat absorbed by manmade CO2 (which is a known quantity).

”In another generation scientists will be as embarassed about AGW as they are about embracing eugenics in before WWII.”
In another generation Americans will be as embarassed about GW Denialists as the Germans are about Holocaust Deniers... :P

fire men have a vested interest in fires happening. Armed forces have a vested interest in wars happening no matter how cruel or outrageous. The police have a vested interest in crime happening. People who sell alarms have a vested interest in something happening that would trigger an alarm -nothing good usually. That´s all fine in business friendly america, even the notion that people have to a degree conflict of interests. however, if you are a climatologist then you are no longer subject to these business friendly considerations: you should make a public oath not to make any money from your profession as it triggers suspicions of vested interests: a good climatologist -or scientist dedicated to the study of AGW for the matter- is a hunger stricken one: if they are not hungry and are able to successfully pursue their studies they are not honorable enough to be taken under serious consideration, as they are making money and therefore are in conflict of interest.

Is it surprising that this kind of reasoning comes from people that endorse this kind of fallacious thinking:

a) GW does not exist.
b) If there is a GW it cannot be linked to anthropogenic causes, as it is a natural cycle. Note: how can one deny something happening or existing and then go on to say that it is happening but not for the reasons people assume it to happen?
c) Any failures, infirmities or uncertainties in the accepted science of GW are a direct proof of GW not existing. That is tantamount to saying. "That train rolls on those tracks because a fairy makes it". "No it does´t, therefore the train does not exist". Doh!
d)Pretty soon, we will learn that man does not exist.

The real scam is that GW´s consequences involve a lot of very uncomfortable choices, which many are absolutely loath to even start discussing. I suggest the best way forward is to ignore them as they clearly have demonstrated time and time again it is impossible to reason or to bring them to an even playing field. The deniers tag actually suits them well, because that´s what they do: live in denial.

Worse than denial, it's human nature. Read up on the concept termed 'motivated reasoning,' apply it at the population level, and you'll likely come to realize that humanity will likely never possess the fortitude to confront so sweeping and gradual a problem as climate change.

Soon, if not already, the principal consideration will not be the causation of climate change but the 'how' and 'by who' of mitigation. I suspect that even the libertarians will concede that a collective effort is needed, and so the question will boil down to distribution of the cost. Having long wished for a VAT for a variety of unrelated reasons, hopefully the eventual honest reckoning with climate change will finally bring us to our senses, Grover Norquist notwithstanding.

I can remember the days I attended to High School classes five years ago, and in class we used to argue that developed countries as the US would not take in account to change their behaviour before greenhouse gas emission because it had not thence affected their economies. Natural phenomens would affect rather underdeveloped countries as many in Africa, for example. Nevertheless nowadays it can be noticed that they must take in account and in their budgets to change mind,otherwise the world have demaged not only GDP but also the life.

You sir, make it seems that the United States never had thought about natural disasters happening in their ground, and it seemed like a narrow-minded comment. I'm not criticizing you, but let me remind you that, although the US has its faults, not predicting these natural disasters is not one of them

Assertions that global warming is causing Africa to dry up, resulting in expanding deserts and shrinking crop production, are simply false. To the contrary, as the planet warms, the African climate is becoming more conducive to agricultural production and human welfare.

In 2009 scientists at Boston University examined satellite data and discovered a long-term shift from dryer to wetter conditions throughout the Sahara Desert. As reported by BBC News, “satellite images from the last 15 years do seem to show a recovery of vegetation in the Southern Sahara.”

The improvement in African precipitation and soil moisture extends far beyond the Sahara. Even in the Namib Desert in the southwestern corner of the continent, precipitation shows long-term improvement.

“The broader picture is reinforced by studies carried out in the Namib Desert in Namibia,” BBC News reported. “This is a region with an average rainfall of just 12 millimetres per year – what scientists call ‘hyper-arid’. Scientists have been measuring rainfall here for the last 60 years. Last year the local research centre, called Gobabeb, measured 80mm of rain.”

The improvement in African precipitation and soil moisture is hardly a surprise. Soil moisture has improved throughout most of the planet during the past century as the planet continues to recover from the Little Ice Age.

As U.S. Geological Survey scientists report in the peer-reviewed Journal of Hydrology, “Evidence indicates that summer soil moisture content has increased during the last several decades at almost all sites having long-term records in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank.”

With global soil moisture improving “at almost all sites” with long-term records, it would be hard to argue that global warming is causing drought in Africa. If drought were actually becoming more common in Africa, the global increase in soil moisture would seem to exonerate global warming as the cause. However, as scientists report, African precipitation and soil moisture are increasing, not decreasing.

It is not surprising, therefore, that African crop production is increasing rather than decreasing. African primary crop production and meat production have each tripled since 1960.

Without a doubt, food security is vital to the people of Africa and the world as a whole. Michel Nasibu cannot be faulted for fearing a climate that jeopardizes food security. The good news is that a warmer planet is empirically a wetter planet with improved soil moisture, longer growing seasons, and dramatically rising crop production.

The Earth's ecosystem is that - a complex system with lots of feedback loops that maintain the system. Perturb the system greatly and there is a risk that it will not recover, or will shift to a new equilibrium state we will not find conducive to society as we know it.
The central question that all climate change deniers (and those who deny its anthropogenic origin especially) must answer is this:
How can you put back into the ecosystem proven greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) over the course of 300 years that nature has locked away in the rocks over the course of 300 MILLION years and NOT perturb the ecosystem, in some way?
Deny that and you are a fool; we can argue about the actual impact afterwards...

Nature pumps far more CO2 into the atmosphere than does human activity, and then reabsorbs most of it. I believe the human contribution is less than 5% of total carbon emissions.
Besides, the evidence that CO2 causes climate changes is still suspect for many reasons, not the least of which is that temperatures were about as high as today during the medieval period when the population was less than 1/7 today's.

Typical mix of false facts and flawed reasoning pre-cooked by the denialist websites and now uncritically regurgitated by gullible ideologues.

1) The CO2 system was in equilibrium (equal amounts in and out) until we started adding CO2. Now the absorptive capacity is inadequate and CO2 levels are rising. (I hope you don't dispute that fact. What do you think explains that increase in atmospheric CO2? It just happened to happen when we spewed out massive quantities of the stuff? Stop reading those websites and start thinking!)

2) Even if medieval temperatures were like today's (which they probably were in only a small part of the globe), we know the causes were different. We know it is the enhanced greenhouse effect now - not a shred of doubt among scientists. And that does not augur well because there are lags in the system and CO2 levels are still going up.

Nope. They have seen the evidence, and with the current evidence they have no doubt. Come new evidence, that may change.

But so far the evidence in support of AGW has been accumulating: temperature trends up in oceans and air over land and sea, melting ice cap in the polar region, accelerating melting of land ice on Greenland and west Antarctica, shifting distribution of species to the poles, increasing eCO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, solar fluctuations predicting cooling while we see warming, etc, etc.

"They have seen the evidence, and with the current evidence they have no doubt."

Ah I see. In other words they are just like Born Again Christians: no scepticism, no doubts, no second thoughts, only total unwavering conviction. In the old days, science was all about probabilities. When did it become a religion, I wonder?

Oh, fair enough. About one in forty of climate scientists do not believe that CO2 makes a significant contribution to global warming. And let's guess that on average, the scientists allow for a 0.5% chance that the planet is not warming at all.

Now will you bet the 2.5% are right (and mind you, these don't think CO2 has no influence at all)? Or would you rather take your chances with the 97%?

1) The system was not in equilibrium before we started adding CO2. Even the carbon-phobe data shows large changes in CO2 in the atmosphere over millennia. Yes, we add more today than we did 100 years ago, but it’s such a small part of the total CO2 created by nature that no one can tell whether nature is doing the adding or humans.

2) You don’t know that the causes were different. The planet has been warming since the last ice age. It took a short break for the mini ice age before industrialization and then began warming again. Why ignore the natural warming that occurred for millennia?

You shouldn't slander Christians by identifying them with the carbon-phobes. The climate community quit being scientific when they saw the political implications.

Climate was a science in the 1980's. Then communism collapses and socialists lost the economic argument for socialism. But they didn't quit. They saw climate as a change to implement all of their socialist dreams under the guise of "science."

I first began studying the climate and CO2 issue in the mid-80's and noticed the change from science to ideology. It was very sad.

"Then communism collapses and socialists lost the economic argument for socialism. But they didn't quit. They saw climate as a change to implement all of their socialist dreams under the guise of "science.""

Interesting thesis. But what evidence have you got? Communists traditionally didn't give a hoot for the environment. The Soviet block wasn't exactly known for being clean and efficient.

What really happened was that even before the demise of communism, orthodox libertarians in the US spread the story that people who argue for environmental measures (which often limit the 'rights' of industry to pollute) are actually communists, and thus the enemy, and therefore shouldn't be listened to.

And with you being a free market fundamentalist, you swallowed that lie hook, line and sinker.

1b. Around 85 per cent of global CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources come from burning fossil fuels, nearly 10 per cent from forest deforestation and the rest from cement production and other industrial processes. So how do we know that rising CO2 levels are caused by burning fossil fuels and not phenomena such as bushfires?
Fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are made out of ancient plants and microorganisms — so they are also depleted in carbon-13. The key difference is that, unlike living plant material, fossil fuels contain no carbon-14. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/03/14/3452867.htm

2. What data? But even if so, how is that relevant? How does the MWP disprove CO2-related global warming? This is clearly a logical fallacy of the kind 'Harry was not around when someone was killed last week; therefore he could not have committed murder yesterday'.

With CO2 emissions increasing in the atmosphere, gasses would not need to leave the ocean to reach equalibrium. The temperature and gas content of the ocean surface can determine the equalibrium state, but if the atmosphere already exceeds that, gas simply won't be absorbed by the ocean. But if the CO2 level in the atmosphere was lower it would out-gas. However, when the ocean does outgas, the C13 should be lower than the atmosphere if old CO2 is upwelling.

Does C13 form in the ocean? If not, then I think we can be confident that ocean conditions are a source.

Well, as you can see from the NASA graph CO2 wasn't stable - it fluctuated between 180 and 300ppm. However, CO2 isn't the only factor influencing climate. The earth's tilt, solar activity and volcanoes are some of the other causes of change.

The causes of ice ages are incompletely known, but the most likely scenario is that some minor change (e.g. tilt or solar variation) causes a bit of warming, which leads to release of greenhouse gases from polar regions, which leads to more warming, etc. Until there's no more methane and the process slowly reverses. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Causes_of_ice_ages

Then by definition CO2 was not in equilibrium as you asserted. So what caused the changes in CO2? And why do carbon-phobes assume that the causes of those fluctuations are not operating today and only human produced CO2 (less than 5% of the total) is the only cause of increased CO2?

Actually, better climatologists do know the causes of the ice age, but that's another topic.

What if every once and a while the concentration shoots up to 400ppm, but returns to 2-300 before sealed, and mixes with gasses from the near by couple hundred years. What if the best we are seeing is maybe a 200-800 year average once we start looking back more than a couple hundred years.

Lawrence Solomon from the National Post discovered from the Climategate emails how a small band of climatologists plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period.[67] The Climategate emails revealed the enlistment of Wikipedia in their attempt at rewriting history. It was revealed how Wikipedia’s "green doctor," a U.K. scientist and Green Party activist, rewrote 5,428 climate articles. The recruited Wikipedia administrator, William Connolley, literally rewrote history and then abused his administrative privileges to stifle criticism of the global warming orthodoxy.[68] Lawrence Solomon wrote on this revelation and on Wikipedia's loss of integrity as a source of factual information, and on the clear abuse of power from administrative authorities within Wikipedia:

"Starting in February 2003, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period. All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions.[69]http://www.conservapedia.com/Climategate

Like almost everyone, I am sick of the gate cliche, and I think the hypocrisy of the Nixon lynching stinks all the way to Alpha Centauri.

This is an age of Orwellian lies which George Orwell himself could not have imagined in his worst nightmare. The frustrating thing about anthropogenic global warming propaganda is that it is irrefutable except by a climatologist, and there is no way of knowing what they think. It does not take an expert, however, to tell that the Al Qaeda terrorist plot of 9/11 is the most preposterous hoax in history or that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, and only a mad man could think that homosexuality is healthy and natural.

Barack Obama's own lawyer admits that the computer image of his Certificate of Live Birth is a forgery.

NEW YORK, NY – After a Maricopa County law enforcement agency conducted a six-month forensic examination which determined that the image of Obama’s alleged 1961 Certificate of Live Birth posted to a government website in April, 2011 is a digital fabrication and that it did not originate from a genuine paper document, arguments from an Obama eligibility lawyer during a recent New Jersey ballot challenge hearing reveals the image was not only a fabrication, but that it was likely part of a contrived plot by counterfeiters to endow Obama with mere political support while simultaneously making the image intentionally appear absurd and, therefore, invalid as evidence toward proving Obama’s ineligibility in a court of law.http://www.teapartytribune.com/2012/04/13/obama-lawyer-admits-forgery-bu...

This proves that there is such a thing as intimidation of science for ideological sake.

If you are still unconvinced, why do you suppose all the television networks, Tom Brokaw, The New York Post and the National Enquirer and Sun tabloids were sent anthrax laced letters starting on 9/18/2001? Why were USA Patriot Act opponents, Senators Daschle and Leahy, sent the world's most advanced weaponized anthrax?

"The frustrating thing about anthropogenic global warming propaganda is that it is irrefutable except by a climatologist, and there is no way of knowing what they think. It does not take an expert, however, to tell that the Al Qaeda terrorist plot of 9/11 is the most preposterous hoax in history or that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, and only a mad man could think that homosexuality is healthy and natural.,"
_
Say no more, mr Oller. This makes all your comments perfectly clear.
_
Funny enough, just yesterday I read about a study that shows that many people who refute AGW also believe in other conspiracies (see this article). QED.
_
The article ends thus: "Psychological research has found that conspiracy beliefs are hard to dislodge [...] but efforts to debunk multiple lines of conspiratorial reasoning at once may help."
_
So there's hope for you yet.

I read "Climate Change Denial & Conspiracy Theories: New Research Provokes Even More Irrationality," and it contains the most condescending put down of them all: the attempt equate anyone who states the obvious about the World Trade Center demolition and Pentagon bombing with moon landing deniers.

Such conspiracies are only possible because The United States is dead. The land mass still exists, but the government has been replaced by a ventriloquists dummy. Likewise, Great Britain still exists, but it is ruled by the same Zionist occupation government as the USA and Canada.

That's a good point because the estimates of previous CO2 output are just estimates based on a model. The carbon-phobes don't provide anyone with the error in their estimate, which chould be as high as 50% based on other work they have done. Previous CO2 output could easily have been 50% higher than they report.

Also, they don't know what they claim to know about current CO2 output. They have estimates based on models that have large error ranges that they never report.

Except, we are left dead bodies, more expensive/less food, poor health, poorer education (due to health and suffering). A dirtier wold since we'd need to find and extract large amounts of rare earth minerals using very toxic processes.
We'd have to burn more fuels to meet our energy demands due to sequestration, polluting more and requiring more work for extraction.
Poorer land management because of technology not reaching the developing world.
Less technology and resources available to build protective features and prepare for disasters (weather, cosmic, biological)...http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/not_so_hot?page=fullhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020484050457808941365945270...

If you refer to rare earth minerals for magnets for windmills, you are definitely correct, but wind power was never meant to be taken seriously as an energy source. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, is the most abundant, environmentally benign source of electrical power ever invented. That is true whether uranium or thorium based.

Just read your link to Lomborg's article in FP. Some of his criticism of the DARA report is probably fair, but I object to two of his points.

First, he finds that actions to reduce eCO2 emissions will not have much effect before 2030, which is probably true enough, but then fails to point out that AFTER 2030 it will make a great difference if we act now or not. If you take a short time horizon you underestimate the effects of climate change.

Second, he argues that the millions of deaths due to air pollution are not relevant. That is silly, because if we reduce our use of fossil fuels (esp. coal and oil), we also avoid many of those deaths. These are added benefits of action on climate change, and in themselves sufficient reason to tax the use of those dirty fuels.

The points you make are not supported by the Lomborg paper and I refuse to read any more rubbish from WSJ. It's toxic in its ideological zeal and slavish defense of the vested interests of big business.

It would not matter much if the waste were dumped on the ground. Just don't eat it. Even the scare stories about radioactive fallout from an all out nuclear war are grossly exaggerated, and the longer the half-life of a radioactive isotope, the weaker the radioactivity.